Jason Bateman: Having a ball
This former teen pinup isn't dodging his past. Now he's blazing a funny new future.
By Frappa Stout

Mention the name Jason Bateman to anyone who owned a television in the 1980s and you get the same reaction. Instant recognition -- "Oh yeah, I remember him from TV!" -- followed by a puzzled expression. "Wait, what show was he in, again?"

Bateman was a bona-fide star back then. (Remember "Silver Spoons?" "The Hogan Family?") But it turns out his "Tiger Beat" centerfold status eclipsed much of the actual work he did.

"I've been carrying around a little bit of baggage with me," Bateman, whose sister, Justine, was also an '80s sitcom star, confesses in his drawn-out, square-mouthed way of talking. "I've been doing soft family comedy for 25 years, and I'm trying to change people's perceptions."

Now that he's 35, Bateman's efforts to move beyond his pin-up-star past seem to be paying off. His critical-hit TV comedy "Arrested Development" was recently greenlighted by Fox for a second season, despite up-and-down ratings. And next Friday, Bateman hits the big screen in the Ben Stiller comedy "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story."

Bateman landed the part after he impressed Stiller, also the movie's producer, playing Vince Vaughn's drug-dealing sidekick in their March hit "Starsky & Hutch."

He got a lesson in physical comedy watching Stiller and Vaughn rock '70s style in "Starsky" and, in the new movie, get pummeled by big rubber balls.

A cringe-inducing injury fest, "Dodgeball" is the story of a group of socially challenged friends who, led by Vaughn, compete in a dodgeball tourney to save their gym from corporate takeover by a slick team headed by bad guy Stiller. Bateman plays an obnoxious TV announcer with spiked hair, Oakley Blades sunglasses and a flaming dodgeball tattoo on his neck. "You know the guys from the X Games? I'm like one of those idiots," Bateman says of his character. "I throw 'dude' out like it's going out of style, and I'm quick to the high-fives."

That's behavior one could imagine from the teen sitcom stud of bygone days. But today's Bateman possesses a much drier, subtler sense of humor. For lunch at a swank Soho eatery in Manhattan, he shows up ultra-casual -- looking even cuter and beefier in person -- in a black fitted tee, brown New Balance sneakers and black jeans. He has to buy pricier jeans, he explains -- today, it's Paper Denim & Cloth -- because he has "stout legs," and Levi's tend to grab them. "I'm a 34 waist, 32 inseam, which is not a good look," he adds with a crooked grin. "You kind of want your legs to be longer than your waist circumference."

He breaks the ice by joking to the waiter that we're "looking for romance." But Bateman has been married for three years to actress Amanda Anka, singer Paul Anka's daughter, and confesses he's been thinking more and more about fatherhood. "My wife, not so much," he says. "She comes from a big family, and she's had enough. But I think I've worn her down." Actually, the couple plans to begin trying to conceive this summer, he says. It's a few weeks before the fate of "Arrested Development" is announced by Fox, and Bateman jokes that gainful employment in the form of a second season would do wonders for his sex life: "[Fox president] Gail Berman has the fate of my progeny in her hands."

While Bateman's pursuits have grown up, he also seems to be happily stuck in that netherworld of Generation X'ers moving forward but unwilling to give up their youthful cool. He TiVos "60 Minutes" and "Charlie Rose," along with Dodgers games. He relaxes by the Japanese koi pond in the back yard of his L.A. home. He listens to Mozart and Beethoven on his iPod, but the classics share rotation with hipster faves the White Stripes, Radiohead and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. And when the subject of age comes up, Bateman is quick to point out he shares a birthday (Jan. 14, 1969) with rocker Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters.

Bateman's TV show, which he describes as "'The Royal Tenenbaums' shot like 'Cops,'" also offers the strange dichotomy of adults acting like fifth-graders. It looks at a morally depraved family via a documentary feel, with no fancy lights, no laugh track and a jittery, hand-held camera. That grittiness and a fast pace make it more difficult to watch than most TV comedies, which Bateman thinks is why it hasn't yet made a splash with the masses.

Still, it's the work he's proudest of so far. That is, besides his famous trick, which he hopes will earn him a spot on "Letterman:" "I can make a ball of gum hover above my lips with some pinpoint blowing," he says.

Now who's talking arrested development?